Just A Dream: Endurance
by Lady Proserpina
Summary: Kagome jumps down the well one day and wakes up on the other side on her 15th birthday. She travels through life in a haze of depression. But who are the strange people who show up? And what do they know that Kagome doesn't?
1. Happy Birthday! prologue

**A/N**

**Disclaimer: I do not own InuYasha. I just write about their versitile personalities.**

**This is the return of a story I started writing, oh, about three years ago. So if anyone accuses me of copying, its been around forever. You have no argument.**

**Welcome to the edited version of Just a Dream. This story is my baby, in a sense, so I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it for you.**

**Dedicated to Beloved Rose, who seems to be the only other person who cares about this story.**

**Just A Dream**

**Chapter 1**

**Happy Birthday (prologue)**

"See you tomorrow guys," Kagome called, "I have another test to take!" She climbed into the Bone Eaters Well and dropped down, but not before she heard InuYasha say, 'I don't see what's so special about these 'tests,' but she sure seems to like them a lot.' He never did understand the purpose of High School. Kagome smiled as she fell through time, letting the rippling sensation of time travel engulf her.

She vaguely remembered something seeming off about the whole thing. InuYasha's too submissive response to her leaving, the weird rippling of the time slip, and how long the time change was taking. Usually she appeared in the present seconds after jumping into the well. Now it had been well over a minute, and she wasn't home yet. Her pondering didn't last long as she remembered her test in math. Ugh, she hated-

"HAPPY BIRTHDAY KAGOME!" The loud yell echoed through the small room, bringing complete surprise to the room's sleeping inhabitant. Kagome jerked up in shock, banging her head on the headboard of her bed in the process.

Swirl-eyed, Kagome simply groaned, "Owww," in response and slid partially back down.

The stars cleared from her vision and she slowly drifted back into reality as somebody near the door said, 'I'm sorry girls, I thought she'd be awake.'

As her vision cleared completely of the little dancing stars, Kagome saw her three best friends and her mother standing in her bedroom. "Wha... How'd I get here?" She asked to the air, "I don't remember coming up here." Her three best friends just stared at her, as if she had grown another head.

"But Kagome, you came up here after you grandpa gave you that mummified _thing_. You've been here ever since. You must have been asleep," her mom answered gently, "Now come on, you're going to be late." Her mother, while kind, wasted no time in trying to get Kagome's senses back.

"B-b-b-but," Kagome stuttered, "What about Shippo? Miroku? Sango? And InuYasha...?" She trailed off. She didn't give a darn what everybody thought, she was only confused. Why were they looking at her like she had sprouted an extra head?

Her friends gave her identical 'are you insane?' looks as her mom kindly asked, "Who? Those don't sound like normal names, dear."

Kagome was puzzled now. Her mom should have known InuYasha at least. "You don't remember InuYasha, mom? Remember, he's the guy with the dog ears! He interrupted dinner that night, and you just had to pet his ears? The one pinned to the Goshinboku by Kikyo? Always fighting Naraku or his brother Sesshomaru!" She invented motions to accentuate her point, pointing to imaginary dog-ears, pretending to shoot an arrow, and just waving her arms around at the battle idea. She completely ignored the fact the she was trying to keep the battle thing a secret.

"We were chasing after the sacred jewel- wait a minute! Did you just say that it's my birthday? But..." After drawing a small circle in the air in thought, Kagome's face lit up. She sprang out of bed and flew over to the calendar, almost crashing into her mother.

She stood there opening and closing her mouth silently, and blinking stupidly. The calender was wrong. It had to be. There was no way a whole three years could just disappear. She felt around her neck, looking for the small bottle that always hung there, holding the jewel shards. Finding nothing, she turned around with a stricken look on her face.

"Kagome," Eri began, but Kagome's mother finished for her.

"Maybe you should stay home today, honey, you look sick." Their words were kind, but Kagome could pick out the hint of disbelief, and worry.

Kagome didn't hear a word any of her friends, or even her mother, had said. She was lost in her own thoughts of loss and confusion, coming closer to breaking down every second. The question still remained, what had happened?

_It seemed so real though! Does that mean that the whole thing was a dream? But it seemed so real though! The well... InuYasha... Everything was so real, there was no way it was only a dream. It couldn't be! The emotion was too raw, too pure to be over a dream, a fake._

Kagome tried to think back to what had happened right before she woke up. The strange thing was, the details from right before she woke up were getting foggy. Exactly like a dream, she was slowly forgetting the immediate details. But only the immediate ones, while the entire well scene was almost gone, everything else was crystal clear.

But the fading... It wouldn't leave her mind, what if everthing else would fade in time too?

_What happened, if nothing was real, I slept through all of it? The whole three years of it? It was all... just... a dream?_

A tear slid down her cheek.


	2. Was it Really a Dream?

**A/N**

**Note the name-change. I decided that since This was a second edition, I'd tweak the name. So I made it the perfect anagram for the word 'jade', which happens to be one of my favorite gemstones. Deal with it. Besides, the word 'endurance' fits my plotline.**

**Disclaimer: Nope, Don't own it.**

**_Lady Katreina_- Thanks for being the only one who reviewed. Sorry for my mistake; you did read this before. I hope you like the new version better too!**

**Chapter 2**

**Was it Really a Dream?**

Kagome probably would have stood there crying forever, but her friends had other ideas. "Come _on_ Kagome, get ready! Hojo's been asking about you! And the transfer student is coming today! Remember hearing about him? Maybe we can finally get you a date," Ayumi rattled off while Eri and Yuka threw Kagome's uniforms everywhere in attempt to find a clean one. "Jeez, Kagome! Do you even own anything clean? Move or something! Anybody would think that you're not home in there. Help us get you ready," Ayumi continued. Kagome's mom just rolled her eyes and walked back downstairs.

Kagome, who was still in a state of mild shock, woke up long enough to say something that everybody else was missing. "You do realize that all of the possible combinations you guys could come up with would all look the same? So there's really no point in emptying my closet. We have uniforms, remember?" She began to ask, but trailed off towards the end. None of the others noticed that she had gone back into space. While they were still busy picking out an outfit for her, the words _it was just a dream, it was all just a dream_ kept echoing around in her head.

It took all of her friends and almost an hour to get Kagome ready, partially because Kagome was completely zoned out. Now they were all running very late, so Yuka, Eri, and Ayumi rushed Kagome out the door, trampling her brother Souta and ignoring a call of 'She needs breakfast!' from Kagome's mother.

Kagome's friends had to all but carry her as they made their way to school. Kagome was frozen in time, so she really had no use of her legs or movement in general. She was still sane enough to realize that she shouldn't be this depressed over a dream, but she didn't care. She missed them so much already, she couldn't stand it anymore.

Kagome receded farther back into her mind, leaving her body an empty shell. There was a good thing, at least for her friends. Without a depressed Kagome refusing to move, her body could move on it's own, so they didn't have to drag her anymore. At least she didn't look as much like an idiot as she did before. Even though they weren't forcing her to move anymore, not even Kagome's friends noticed the odd silver wind that blew across the road.

Now that she was back at school for good, Kagome sighed. Nobody knew that she had left, nobody knew the fun she had, even if they wouldn't anyway. As that brief moment of ironic humor passed, Kagome found herself crying again. At least this waterfall of tears was only in her mind, not actually streaming down her face.

However, Kagome did realize, with much irony, that she remembered learning almost everything on her lessons from her dream. So she didn't have to pay as much attention. She was grateful for that.

Kagome jerked out of her depressed state at lunch, when she realized that her body had gone to all of her classes when she was locked inside her mind. She tried to eat a little bit, but as she did, the room swam before her.

Yuka, Eri, and Ayumi were eating and talking cheerfully without her, not even noticing that the Kagome they knew was gone. She had snapped, and they still treated her just as they did every day. They did, however, notice when Kagome went cross-eyed and fell face first into her noodles. She would have fallen off the chair too, but they managed to get there and catch her in time.

"Kagome, you hardly ate anything. Are you sure you're okay?" Kagome heard distantly.

_Oh, yeah, you really asked if I was okay before you dragged me here in the first place_, she thought. The crazed laughs that followed were interrupted by sobs and those were interrupted as Kagome crossed her arms and rested her head on the table without replying.

Kagome had drifted into a much needed blissful sleep when a voice above her said loudly, "Excuse me, may I sit here?"

She groaned and looked up. The scene that followed would have looked rather funny to an on-looker. When Kagome saw the person's face, her eyes bulged, her jaw dropped, and she fainted for the second time that lunch period.

"Kagome!!" Her friends hissed under their breaths.

"I'm sorry, was it something I said?" The poor puzzled boy asked. The girls remembered that he was there, and jerked around to face him. They turned tomato red as they realized that he was the transfer student, and he was hotter then everyone had rumored.

They quickly scooted themselves and Kagome's unconscious form over so he could sit with them. He ended up next to Kagome. Meanwhile, Kagome had started to breathe again, relieving everybody, even though she looked like she had seen a ghost.

"Um, is your friend okay?" The still puzzled new guy inquired in a rather touching concerned tone.

"We don't know," admitted Yuka. "She's been like that ever since we woke her up, but we thought she'd recover. Obviously not." Everyone looked at Kagome who muttered some thing like 'nnn, naah humm.'

"Anyway, she almost seems depressed, like something terrible happened, but she was fine yesterday. In fact, the only thing bad to happen to her in the last week was her grandfather giving her a mummified hand for her birthday," Yuka finished and was met with a disgusted look from the new guy.

"A mummified _hand_!?"

"According to her mom, yes- a mummified hand, but that shouldn't get you to this state, should it," Eri said, more like a statement then a question.

Memories of her 'dream' were banging around like loose rocks in semi-conscious Kagome's mind, so she didn't even notice the conversation going on next to her.

_Finding InuYasha... Kaede's necklace... Shippo and the thunder brothers... Miroku... Sango... poor Kohaku... Demon InuYasha... Naraku... Koga... Sesshomaru... Her friends, they were there no matter what... But they couldn't help her now... They were gone... She was alone... Forever... In a dream..._

The others noticed the tears running down Kagome's face. "Jeez, she's crying and she's still out of it! What's she crying over, anyways..." Ayumi wondered aloud.

The moisture of the tears managed to wake Kagome up, however. The very first thing out of her mouth when she woke up was a loud very disturbing yelp, "Miroku!" Then she slumped back down to catch up on her breathing. There was dead silence for a minute at the table, before others resumed their chatter in the background.

"How did you know my name? I don't think I've ever seen you before, and I know I never told your friends," the still puzzled boy asked. Kagome's friends all blushed at the reference to themselves. "I mean, I would recognize a beautiful face like yours."

Kagome turned a brilliant shade of pink, which deepened as she remembered the Miroku that she knew. She figured that this Miroku would probably take further advantage of the current situation, but to her surprise, he didn't.

He remained silent. After a few tense moments of that silence, something clicked in Eri's mind. "Hey, Ayumi, didn't Kagome mention somebody named Miroku when she yelled about that dream of hers?" The silence got even more tense, and Kagome turned an even darker shade of red.

Turning towards Kagome, Miroku gave a perverted grin and was about to say something but was interrupted by a loud 'SLAP!' It had made her mad so, for old times sake, she had slapped him with all the strength she had. She followed this by turning the color of a brick.

Poor Miroku had frozen, wondering what he had done to earn the sore, throbbing red handprint on the side of his face that left his eye twitching. All of Kagome's strength wasn't much at the moment, but that slap hurt like hell just the same.

To break the silence and pressure, Kagome asked a very odd question for the moment. "Were any of your ancestors monks, by any chance?"

When Kagome was opening her mouth, Miroku had been expecting an apology. That was the exact opposite of her question, so, caught off guard, he stuttered, "Ex-excuse me?" Pause. "Er, yes, I believe so. . . Why?"

"That's how I knew your name," replied Kagome simply, "You look like a perverted monk I used to know."

This earned her more confused looks from her friends. Even if it was a long time ago, Kagome couldn't possibly know a long dead person, could she? Miroku, however, didn't find it strange, at least not by his standards. He decided, knowing what he did about her, to play a little prank. He was going to tell a story that had been in his family for generations, because it seemed to fit with what she was saying. He smiled to himself at the outcome he expected.

Miroku cleared his throat and smiled wickedly. "There has been a story passed down many generations about one of my ancestors, a monk also named Miroku. The story takes place in feudal Japan, a forgotten number of years ago, when demons still existed. He had a _kazaana_, a 'wind tunnel,' in his right hand-"

Kagome's eyes were getting wider and her jaw was dropping by the second. She managed to interrupt him anyway. "The wind tunnel was given to his grandfather by a half-demon named Naraku-"

"Um, yes, you're right, but he was a full demon."

"No, he was a half-demon, created by a man named-"

Her friends were confused by this argument- how did Kagome know the new guy's family legend? They were curious anyway, so they shouted, "Just get on with it!"

Not noticing that the room was now silent, "I don't care if you think you know! Just let me finish! How could you possibly know anyway?!" rang out from an annoyed Miroku. His story didn't have the desired effect, and it was beginning to make him mad. Unfortunately, they now held the attention of the entire cafeteria.

"Anyway. The original Miroku joined with a team of strange people, but unfortunately, not much is remembered about them. There was a demon exterminator, Sakura, and a fox demon, Koto-"

"Sango and Shippo," Kagome corrected.

"Whatever. There was also a hanyou, who the whole thing revolved around, whose name has been lost-"

Kagome broke down. "His name was InuYasha," she whispered, resisting the urge to break out in tears again.

"And a girl who came to them through a well, who they believed to be from the future. Only InuYasha- you said it was, right?- could get to her home. Her name was... It was... They called her... Um...-"

Kagome broke down in a coughing fit to disguise her recognition of herself.

The whole cafeteria froze, the only noise being a "Kagome, you should go to the nurse," from Yuka.

Kagome calmed herself, sighed, and ignored Yuka. "So, Miroku, tell me what you know about this future girl."

"Well, one day she supposedly showed up, woke the hanyou, and shattered the precious shikon jewel that she brought back with her. The chased the jewel shards forever, slowly adding to their group, and fighting with Naraku. Until one day, at least. She went back through the well, and was never heard from again. The well-portal had closed up, even for InuYasha. That was the end of her." That, of course, was a very watered down version of the story that Miroku knew. The real one was much too involved to tell during the remaining lunch period.

"So, did Naraku win?" Kagome was genuinely curious. Whatever had happened to her, she had no idea what had happened to anyone else.

"Nobody knows. After the future girl left, the hanyou- InuYasha- went berserk, and the group broke up. All I know after that is what happened to Miroku, and that's pretty boring."

"InuYasha," Kagome whispered again.

**A/N**

**Once again, this was very short. Chapters in general will probably be rather short until I reach some story meat that I can expand upon. And I don't want to deal with the complications involved with combining chapters. Sorry!**

**Please Review!**


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